BCMA Awards for Outstanding Achievement

Gala and Reception

This year’s BCMA Awards for Outstanding Achievement Gala and Reception was held on Monday October 26th at 6pm in the Anvil Centre’s Performing Arts Theatre.

Divided into three categories, the awards recognized:

The Distinguished Service Award which may be given to an individual who has made a unique and outstanding contribution on a provincial or national basis to the museum, gallery, archives or heritage field over an extended period of time.

The Corporate Service Award which may be given to a corporate supporter that has, over an extended period, been innovative in donating funds, services or personnel to the museum, gallery, archives or heritage resources field.

The Award of Merit (up to 3 awards) which may be given to an individual, institution or agency for a recent outstanding, innovative or creative achievement in the museum, gallery, archives or heritage resources field in BC. This award may also be given to those not directly involved in the above fields, but who have made a significant contribution to them.

Gala Emcee

This year’s Gala emcee is the BCMA’s very own council member Danielle Lemon. Danielle is a local triple-threat award winning performer who can regularly be seen onstage around Greater Vancouver. Recent local credits include: Confidential Musical Theatre Roulette (Confidential Musical Theatre Project), One Plus One (World Premiere, Pipedream Theatre Project), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels ( The Lawyer Show),Parade (Confidential Musical Theatre Project), Looking (First Impressions Theatre), A My Name is Alice (VACT/Skycorner), Brief Encounters 19 (The Tomorrow Collective), Spamalot (The Lawyer Show), Assassins (Pipedream Theatre Project), Rimers of Eldritch (Fighting Chance), CAPS LOCK: The Musical (Pipedream, Winner, Pick of the Fringe, Vancouver International Fringe Festival), Guys & Dolls (The Lawyer Show), A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (Fighting Chance), The Mikado (North Shore Light Opera Society), Mame (APPLAUSE!), Good News (APPLAUSE!), Sweeney Todd (Fighting Chance). In her spare time, Danielle is a corporate lawyer with a focus on technology, and a member of the BCMA Council.

The Award and Artist

In a step to support the annual conference host communities, the awards presented to winners are now designed by local artists from current conference locations. This year we are very excited to have New Westminster artist Katherine Freund designing and creating the awards.

Katherine Freund has worked as an illustrator of heritage buildings, a non-fiction writer, author, columnist, a history researcher, an archivist, and is a galleried mixed-media visual artist. Her varied career in history and the arts has led her to become a visual historian where she visually tells the historical story through artwork. Katherine’s knowledge of local history is exemplified through the book she has co-written entitled: A New Westminster Album: Glimpses of the City as it Was, Dundurn Press Toronto, 2005. Her mixed-media artwork involves working with historical photographic imagery, graphite, chalk pastel, brush & ink, pen & ink, charcoal, watercolour pencils & paint, acrylic paint, traditional printmaking, digital printmaking in Digital Mixed-Media, & digital photography, to produce 2D mixed-media on paper and 3D mixed-media assemblage. Katherine has exhibited in 22 Lower Mainland gallery spaces, is also represented in the permanent collections of the City of New Westminster and the Museum & Archives and Public Library, as well as in private collections in Canada, United States, and England. Katherine has also been named the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce’s 2013 Bernie Legge Arts and Culture Award winner for her art and visual historian work representing the City of New Westminster.

Artist Statement: Working as an artist and historian, New Westminster as an art, research, or writing topic provides ample creativity simply by exploring its full and varied past. By this, I am able to enhance the present working state of my artworks, which in turn enriches and completes my outcomes and messages ready for a listening future, near or far. I believe that New Westminster’s local cultural community is strongly based on history enriched through its diversity, allowing and encouraging artists to apply and combine both art and history in unison.

Ultimately, my work, whether it be writing, designing, or researching for the visual story, I utilize my artistic skills to give a full visual representation. I include written statements alongside my art, giving investigative, innovative, & hybrid forms through the basics of visual expression and imagery of history. I tell these visual stories through 2D and 3D assemblages of materials and mediums. I take my own individually printed, photographed, drawn, and painted results, assembling them with an array of mixed materials and the use of historical photographs or objects. I place my elements by hand in carefully chosen arrangements, with the eventuality of blending, or editing, and attaching them together. I assemble my handmade results with layering and more drawing and painting to achieve a new look and feel, taking these forms of art further to alter the conventional boundaries of history through visual story telling with art mediums to put a new face on the traditions of communication.

The BC Museums Association Secretariat is located on the traditional lands of the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.
We are grateful for the opportunity to live and learn here in mutual respect and appreciation.

Our Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Province of British Columbia

We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Royal BC Museum in providing a home for the BCMA secretariat.